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Monday, 19 May 2008

Grape Vine subscribers who take the email update should have received their update this morning. Those who take it by post should get it tomorrow or Wednesday, depending on the stamp they put on thier SAE.

I hope you will all agree that the update is jam packed with comps this time. As for the June GV, I think I'm going to have to stand on the lid of it to help cram everything in. With almost two weeks before it goes to press, it's already bulging with comps.

Friday, 9 May 2008

Well, after a long dry spell the wins have begun to trickle in at last. A recipe book from a web comp, another recipe book as a consolation prize in the Spam recipe comp, a single cinema ticket from Diet Coke and an iPod Shuffle from the fiendishly tough puzzle that was in the book "Invisible City" by M G Harris.

Grape Vine readers will have read about the Invisible City comp on page 8 of the April issue. I hope my efforts paid off and other readers were among the winners.

Wednesday, 7 May 2008

I hope nobody has been offended by a lack of reply to an email sent to the usual Grape Vine email address - I have just found out that several subscribers' email addresses and my own personal email address have somehow been added to the "blocked senders" list! If you have emailed me in the last few weeks and not had a reply when you expected one, please try again, and hopefully this time your message will reach me.

I spent a long day yesterday searching for new comps to put in the June magazine and the May update. There was a rather unfortunate incident in Morrisons when, while looking for a comp which should soon be appearing on neck collars of Beefeater gin, I dropped a bottle on the floor and ended up with my feet bathed in a litre of gin!

Friday, 2 May 2008

All the May issues of Grape Vine were posted early this morning (Friday 2nd May) so most subscribers should have their copies tomorrow. Remember to check page 4 for comps that need your immediate attention!

The April competition on the Grape Vine website has now closed, and if you ever wonder how many entries web comps get and how they are drawn, you might like to see a few facts and figures.

There were around 500 entries, but despite the rules saying "one entry per person", quite a lot of people entered two, three or even TEN times. As a comper myself, I gave everyone the benefit of the doubt and assumed they had forgotten that they had already entered, so kept only the first entry from each person and then deleted their other entries. But it pays to keep a note of what you have entered, because a lot of websites would delete ALL the entries from anyone entering more than once.

Next I removed over 40 wrong answers. The question was "How much does it cost subscribers to receive the mid month update by email?" and even some current subscribers didn't know that it is absolutely FREE! I was surprised by the number of wrong answers, as I had included a link to the page with the correct answer on it.

All this pruning left me with 388 correct and valid entries. I numbered them all, then used a random number generator to give me a winning number, and the person whose entry matched the chosen number became the winner. A note for all of you who leave entering web comps until the last minute - the winner had entered on the second day the comp was on line!

This month's competition is now up and running on the website at http://www.compersgrapevine.co.uk/ so do give it a whirl - but remember two vital things with any comp, whatever the entry method

.... another issue of Grape Vine. It's at the printers now, so all being well I will collect the magazines from them early tomorrow morning and have them in the post by mid day. That means most of you will receive them in time to spend the Bank Holiday weekend comping - and having seen the weather forecast, that seems like a much better idea than a barbecue or a day at the beach.

The only slight concern is that my husband is going into hospital for an operation tomorrow, so depending on how things go I may have to delay posting the magazines until Tuesday, as I mentioned in the mid-month update. But you can be assured that I will do everything possible to get them out sooner than that.